God’s Timing is Perfect
On a Saturday morning Maggie had an MRI. Monday morning her doctor called and told us to come in right away. The test showed that my wife had a brain tumor. Three years prior she had an MRI which showed a brain tumor but the radiologists failed to report it. The good thing about the previous MRI is that it gave us a baseline to know how fast the tumor was growing.
The following Friday, Maggie, my daughter and I had an appointment with a neurosurgeon at the University of Washington Medical Center. He recommended surgery. He told us that he had surgeries scheduled for the next three weeks. His wife and daughter were out looking at colleges that weekend so he told us he could perform the surgery the next morning.
Maggie is a Public Health Nurse and continued working on her cell phone until I finally took it away. She was admitted to the hospital in preparation for the next morning.
That night she called me about 11:30 asking me to cancel the trip we had planned for the following Wednesday. It wasn’t a very high priority to me but I told her I would. As I looked over her notes I discovered that she had taken out cancellation insurance. She had made the reservation through one of the major online travel agencies. I called the 800 number and the man who answered told me that I would have to call the insurance company for a reference number. But before I hung up he asked me why I had to cancel. I told him about Maggie facing neurosurgery. He told me he would pray for her.
I called the insurance company; got the reference number and twenty minutes later called the 800 number back. The voice sounded familiar. “Hi Ken! This is Richie.” It was the exact same person who answered earlier. I asked where he was located and he told me, “India.” I asked if he was Christian and he told me, “Very much so.”
God had allowed us to have someone praying so far away. He did the impossible by having the same person out of so many different call centers answer the telephone twice. I knew that if God cared that much to give me that kind of encouragement Maggie was going to be okay.
During the surgery our family had tremendous peace. Afterwards, I realized that people all over the world were praying; Koreans, someone in Africa, a Spanish congregation, a Ukrainian Church, even a Russian Orthodox, as well as a stranger from India, etc..
She was in the hospital 22 days and the day she left we sat around a large table with 8 specialists. The picture they painted look pretty grim. They told me that I had a Pollyanna outlook on life. And I responded by telling them they could sit their smugly but they had no idea who my God is. It has been four years now and Maggie is the picture of health. Our lives took a right angle turn but life gets better and better each day. We have seen God actively working in our lives and we get up each morning excited to see what the day brings. We have committed our meager retirement money to be used to travel the world to pray for others and to tell about Christ’s love. What a joy it is, knowing that wherever we go, Haiti, India, Africa, China, South America, He is always with us. We are never alone.
